Wednesday, April 14, 2010

There is nothing like driving along the wide American roads, the radio blaring--old rock, or tinny country or the very serious sounding NPR. And driving in America is also about the things you see--the giant geese you have to pause for so they can waddle across the road out of your way, or the troop of llamas at the base of the foothills watching the I-25 traffic race by, or like here, the remaining painted-on ad on a Denver wall as I head back downtown after seeing my Uncle Joe out at the VA nursing home. Now in Iowa, I look forward to what will be seen as I head up to Madison, WI next week...

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, Ewa Chrusciel, Jennifer K. Dick, Pablo Medina, Simon Ortiz, Luisa Villani: Six bilingual authors of poetry discuss the creative process they employ in writing bilingual works, the challenges of translating between languages, the role of multilingualism in communicating to specific audiences, and how readers with different linguistic backgrounds react to the works. Each author on the panel will read poems in his or her working languages. Audience members will hear readings in Acoma, Bulgarian, English, French, Italian, Polish, and Spanish.

AND don't forget VERSAL MAGAZINE! With many events at the conference, and all of us editors hanging out at the Versal table from time to time, it is where you can certainly stop in to see me, subscribe to get the exciting next issue of Versal (issue 8) while picking up in person copies of issue 7 (with my translations of Albane Gellé in that issue!) or older ones. See their weblog at http://versaljournal.blogspot.com/

Sunday, April 04, 2010

Any PC users out there who know how I can get a FREE program to convert Word and other files to PDF formats?

1) I use Word 2003. (I realize there is a free add-on for Word 2007, as I foolishly downloaded it before realizing I was on version 2003!)

2) I cannot get PrimoPdf to work (after I install it, it appears correct, but when I drag the files to convert into their icon, I just get a sort of error code: 0xc0000135) saying it never loaded right, and I tried many times to install it, so evidently this is not going to work.

THANK you to ANYONE who can help me out here. I am exhausted with all the efforts!!! Yes, Mac users, gloat gloat gloat.

Friday, April 02, 2010

(Season 2 Episode 16 Reviewed): Rarely does a backstory grip like this one--where Water tells the tale of going to the other universe to steal Walternate's Peter. Not out of a perhaps expected selfishness--missing his own lost child--but initially to save the child and return it. This episode is moving and explores various emotional levels of the psyche and backstory of the characters we know so well, but it also presents in subtle ways lines of intrigue waiting to be unraveled--where was William Bell really during all of this in 1985? How does the loss of a hand effect the personality of a future superdiva? And what will be the reactions--legal, moral, personal and professional of our agent supreme to this story?

Now that this window into the other universe has been presented, I expect to be seeing its use in forthcoming episodes. For who could, if they had such an opportunity, not want to look into the alternate lives of ourselves? It is doubtful we could suppress that urge and not look, but what might be the ramifications of glancing into that fascinating alterself universe?

And so, it is with great pleasure the next and the next episode of Fringe are awaited. No, Fringe does not have the same police-style gripping plot as many shows are making use of to keep viewers hooked these days, nor does it use the Lost-layering techniques of stacking on each week more unweildable (but often exciting) mysterious lines to lure spectators back, instead Fringe draws viewers back and back again to see an unexpectedly human exploration of the sci-fi world, the entanglements and disentanglements of Peter and his father, Peter and Agent Dunham, Bell and who we now realize was his old partner. Where will this highly imaginative peculiar new fantasy-sci fi ultratech now and alternow lead these characters? Inquiring minds certainly do want to know!

This FOX TVshow has in fact outdone its initial self--moved past the flashy action-packed filmic pilot with fairly generic characters (woman agent betrayed by man agent, crazy Dr Frankenstein-like Walter Bishop and his politically shady unstable son) to a show which grips watchers on both a character and character-development level. These characters are humans fighting a sort of classic comic-book style fantasy with the mad skills of advanced/fantasy-level science. Like a classic comic hero, they are supposedly in search of protecting people, striving to make the world a better place to live in. However, they find themselves doing this often through slightly morally compromised means. Here, Walter does not return Peternate to Walternate--and now we shall see what are / were the outcomes of this. In a most peculiar way, it is as if Walter hurts himself, his alterself--and that, too, is intriguing. More to come, and more reasons to hook into Fringe.

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Here is the jpeg of the conference poster for the conference Stephanie Schwerter and I have co-organized over at the FMSH and EHESS:La traduction / la transmissibilité et la communication transculturelle dans les sciences socialeshttp://traductiontransmissibilite.blogspot.com/

It will be held Monday the 10th and Tuesday 11th of May 2010!

There will also be readings Sunday night the 9th of May 2010 and Wednesday evening the 11th of May 2010 to accompany the event!

Circuits by Jennifer K Dick, Corrupt Press 2013

240pp on translation in the wide range of the social sciences today. Available for order and reviewing (click image) from the Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, Paris. The articles collected here originated in a conference held in Paris at the EHESS in summer 2009.

IVY WRITERS PARIS bilingual reading series founded by JK Dick and M Noteboom

TRANSMISIBILITY AND CULTURAL TRANSFER: DIMENSIONS OF TRANSLATION IN THE HUMANITIES, click to order

Click 4 Tears in the Fence Magazine, UK. I write a reg column in each issue for them!

“The only literary magazine in the UK that lets the margins and the great tradition speak. It is a book to treasure.”-- Ketaki Kushari Dyson on issue 57. ISSUE N° 59 will be out in April 2014, order now!

Click image for NEW SITE, FEB 2014. FYI: Versal has been called “edgy” “urgent” and “evocative” (--Robyn Campbell) It is “a thoughtful collection of sophisticated, inventive writing and art.”—Cara Bigony, New Pages. Order by clicking image